Don’t be afraid of the General Factor of Personality (GFP): Its relationship with behavioral inhibition and anxiety symptoms in children

General Factor of Personality and Its Relationship with the Dark Triad and Social Intelligence in Slovenian Adolescents

The general factor of personality (GFP) represents the shared variance between personality traits that yield social adjustment and acts as a core personality disposition. In the present study, the existence of GFP in a sample of 249 Slovenian adolescents aged 15–19 years was investigated, and the relationship between GFP, the Dark Triad, and social intelligence was researched. The study used three self-report questionnaires to measure the Big Five, the Dark Triad, and three dimensions of social intelligence. It was found that, in adolescents, GFP exists (although in a somewhat different composition than in previous studies) and is negatively correlated with Machiavellianism and psychopathy and positively correlated with social skills and social awareness. GFP acts as a significant positive predictor of all social intelligence dimensions, and Machiavellianism acts as a significant positive predictor of social information processing and social skills. It can be concluded that GFP and, to a certain extent, perhaps some manipulative tendencies positively predict how an individual functions in society. With these findings, the study contributes to the understanding of the (hierarchical) structure of personality and its association with behavior in social interactions, which is one of the most important developmental tasks in adolescence.

Traits across the personality hierarchy differentially relate to positive and negative affect: Evidence for the predictive validity of empirically derived meta-traits

There is increasing interest in the construct validity of higher-order domains of the Big Five personality traits. A total of 831 persons from the Swiss population completed the International Personality Item Pool and an adaptation of the Positive and Negative Affect Scales. Using Goldberg's bass-ackwards method, we found evidence for the general factor of personality (GFP) and the two meta-traits of positive emotionality (blend of low neuroticism and high extraversion) and constraint (blend of high agreeableness and conscientiousness). In association with positive affect, the explanatory power of the GFP (r = 0.43) and positive emotionality (r = 0.37) was largely superior to extraversion (r = 0.24), conscientiousness (r = 0.18), agreeableness (r = 0.09) and openness (r = 0.04), although not neuroticism (r = -0.34). In association with negative affect, neuroticism (r = 0.41), the GFP (r = -0.36) and positive emotionality (r = -0.35) were the most powerful single predictors. We conclude that the higher-order structure of personality is best explained by the meta-traits of positive emotionality and constraint, which correspond closely to the well-established superfactors of internalizing and externalizing. We further demonstrate that these have substantial criterion validity when broad positive and negative affect is the outcome of interest. These findings help to relate Big Five meta-traits to pathological personality. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Big Five Personality Traits and the General Factor of Personality as Moderators of Stress and Coping Reactions Following an Emergency Alarm on a Swiss University Campus

We conducted an online survey including 306 participants aged 18-64 years to assess the general factor of personality (GFP) and Big Five personality traits in relation to individual stress and coping reactions following a shooting emergency alarm at a Swiss university campus. Although the emergency eventually turned out to be a false alarm, various witnesses showed pronounced distress owing to a vast police operation. The GFP structure was replicated using two alternative modelling approaches. Neuroticism related substantially to acute fear and traumatic distress as well as to more enduring maladaptive coping. Agreeableness was negatively associated with the coping strategy of medication use, whereas both agreeableness and conscientiousness related positively to social activity following the emergency. The GFP related moderately to peri-traumatic distress and showed a substantial negative association with medication use and a strong positive association with social activity. In conclusion, both the GFP and Big Five traits significantly moderate stress responses following a stressful life event. The GFP predominantly relates to socially adaptive coping, whereas in particular neuroticism accounts for acute stress reactions such as fear and traumatic distress. These findings support the notion that personality influences how persons react in the face of adversity. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.